Archive for November, 2011

Holy crap, I made it. I really thought I was gonna quit this countdown halfway through, especially with the hectic schedule that I have now. Heck, I have to turn in a 4000 word paper six days from today on Utilitarianism and Information Technology and all I did so far was just get links together. Truly, I think I was able to finish the month because I wrote some of the articles in September and October.

Also, about halfway through, I started wondering if this countdown was an over saturation of Thanksgiving. Was this too much Thanksgiving? It’s hard for me to tell because that’s all you think about when working on daily posts about one subject. It was hard work, but I’m sad it’s over. If anything, the countdown let me celebrate one of my most favorite holidays and I feel like I gave it props while everyone else is roasting chestnuts and counting down the days till Christmas.

The daily posting also got me used to writing all the time. I’m not too worried about writing that Philosophy paper I mentioned above and I will probably post more regularly than ever. Maybe I can learn to schedule better than writing at 3am Thanksgiving morning.

I can’t help it though. I’ve been busy all day and I will be busy the whole day on Thanksgiving. I’ll be leaving my home at 2pm with my family to visit the in-laws in Montclair, NJ. It’s about 45 minutes from where I’m at but you know how the traffic will be.

Well, might as well break out the baked macaroni.

It’s possible that we could arrive at our destination at 4pm, which is when guests are expected. Then there’s a chance that we could be there up to five hours, just BS’ing and whatever, and it also depends on how much I drink and how long I have to wait until I’m under the limit.

It’s funny though because my wife and I are used to making our own Thanksgiving dinner. We get a free turkey at the local supermarket cause we spend enough money there in October and November to reach the smallest amount required for the turkey deal. So, we’re going to the in-laws today and then we’re cooking our own meal on Friday. It may sound crazy to some, but that’s what we’ve done the last few years and it’s totally worth it. Not one, but two Thanksgivings. Sweet.

If they didn’t have those turkey sales, I would probably be inclined to buy a crossbow and stalk my neighborhood streets for some birds. No, I’m not looking for pidgins. My neighborhood happens to have wild turkeys running around. They’re mostly by the nearby hospital, but they wander off. I’ve seen then right on my block several times.

Pic taken with my phone.

They can be a real pest too. They get in front of traffic and stand there like a turkey in headlights. You can’t just kill them either. You would need a hunting license (which the city won’t give) to catch them. It wouldn’t matter if you were starving or anything like that.

I don’t hate the birds. They’re kinda cool to see, especially if they’re walking with their babies. The problem is that no one curbs their reproducing. There can be a lot of them at times. Some dude got arrested for trapping some even though they kept damaging his property. That blows.

The authorities should take at least some of the turkeys for food. There are a lot of broke families in New York City who may not have a proper Thanksgiving. Imagine that. No turkey or stuffing while everyone else is eating it (mostly). I’ve always had a Thanksgiving and not having one must be the worst. This is one of the reasons why I always check out food charities around this time of year. It may seem silly to some, but I think it’s terrible not to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving because you can’t, not because you won’t. There are charities everywhere and there’s one in NYC called FeedingNYC. These people wake up early to get to the packing area at 6am on Thanksgiving to set up boxes of food to deliver around the city.

These people are hardcore. They work 13 hours on Thanksgiving for free and finish at 7pm. Although it is a nice gesture, I doubt I’ll do that. But you could always give to their cause or to a similar local food charity. Help give others something to be thankful for.

I’m a busy person on Thanksgiving, but I know there are others who don’t do anything on the holiday cause they have nothing to do. It’s widely known that suicides rise during the holidays. If I had no one, I would volunteer to help deliver food on Thanksgiving because helping others is a good feeling and they all seem like cool people.

One last point; I hit a milestone recently during the countdown. November 13th was the second anniversary of this blog here. I was so busy with many things that I forgot to acknowledge the date. I didn’t really have anything planned and truthfully, I didn’t post that many updates. Still, I believe my writing has improved ten fold since I started this, and I wanted to give tributes to certain subjects along the way (which I have).

As of this point, I don’t see any reason to end the blog. I don’t have a large amount of readers but I get at least over 30 views a post. That means at least a few people find what I write interesting. Another weird thing I didn’t expect was the emotional attachment for the blog that slowly grew over time. Even if no one was reading this, I would miss doing this and would probably be upset. I probably would get better at Call of Duty, but I think there’s more freedom writing to my blog.

So, this is the end to the Thanksgiving countdown. I don’t know if I’ll do it again next year cause it can be hard to find a month’s worth of things to write about for one holiday. I’ll let the comments decide for me. Let me know if the countdown was Good, Meh, or “don’t quit your day job.”

Whenever I find any weird stuff in the supermarket, I always try to get a blog post in to let others know what’s out there, just in case any hermits visit my blog. Now, since this is a Thanksgiving countdown, I thought it would be sweet to speak about some seasonal stuff I saw sitting on shelves. I’m always on the lookout and I saw this:

It’s Pumpkin Spice Country Crock butter. I’ve gained a taste for Pumpkin Spice because of Starbucks and their flavored lattes. I buy them up as soon as they appear in stores and when I saw this butter in the supermarket, I knew that I had to have it.

To be fair, there’s is not anything on the packaging that mentions Thanksgiving at all, however I usually equate Autumn to October and November, and November is all about the turkey stuff. I also needed an excuse to see how pumpkin spice and butter tasted together. I never had bi butter before.

The texture of the butter is slightly firmer and maybe even a little bit dryer than regular butter. It would slightly crack when I stuck the butter knife into it so I can make a spread on my toast.

The butter looks kinda funny because it looks like I’m trying to eat toast with mustard. There are tiny brown specks in it, similar to pumpkin spice drinks and the like.

The result? Not bad at all. I really thought it was going to be one of those products that you eat maybe three times and then toss it in the trash because it’s too much, but they found a decent balance. I may be able to actually finish the tub. Now I’m off to put “eat toast with mustard” on my to-do list out of curiosity.

I got one more thing to cover since I never tried it before and this was definitely Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving Sugar Cookies! Really, it’s just sugar cookies, but I love what Pillsbury did here. The Dough Boy is decked out in Pilgrim gear, complete with the hat, there’s turkeys on the actual cookies, and it’s in an orange box. What’s not to like?

I’ve never seen these cookies before, and I don’t understand why. I looked at the back of the box and there’s different designs made specifically for different holidays.

There’s Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, etc. Hell, there’s even cookies for Back to School. I guess something to ease the pain.

After I opened the box, I lined up the cookies and I couldn’t help noticing how small they were. I don’t cook much cookies but I expected something bigger than this.

Two inch diameter cookies. Yea…

So I popped them into the oven real quick and the cookies did get a little bigger, which was cool. I’m thinking they are probably for young children, and they were pretty good. I guess it’s hard to mess up sugar cookies.

So it was an easy make and there were a lot of cookies. I would say both products are a win, especially the pumpkin spice. I’d like to say that I’ll review more Thanksgiving products, but the countdown ends tomorrow! What am I gonna do now?

What could make Thanksgiving morning better for a teenage guy in the 90’s? Beavis and Butthead of course. Although I did not know about this special at the time, I would have definitely woken up early to watch it if I knew it was coming on. I was probably hanging out late and sleeping in at that time. Nowadays I stay in most of the time and usually wake up early. Responsibility sucks.

The special aired on MTV on November 27, 1997 during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The premise of the show is basically Beavis, Butthead, and Kurt Loder covering the Thanksgiving parade that runs through Times Square while sharing thoughts about the holiday. As you can imagine, some unique perspectives for turkey day were shared.

Truthfully though I think the special was made mostly to plug the final episode of Beavis and Butthead, which aired the next night. It was mentioned several times throughout the show. I remember that there was major buzz on the last show which supposedly had Beavis and Butthead die.

Also, I could be wrong but their balloon may have also been used to promote the “final” episode. Yeah, MTV had a balloon made up of Beavis and Butthead. The balloon wasn’t actually part of the parade, MTV anchored a balloon of them onto the top of their building. I really don’t know how I never found out about this until recently.

Where the hell was I??

Those who are into their humor will find the jokes in this special funny. Beavis and Butthead constantly make jokes about Loder for most of the episode. It is a good dynamic for such different personalities to host a show. It definitely keeps this special from drying out(no pun intended).

The jokes come fast and constant as any other B&B episode. I don’t want to write too much because I’ll spoil any jokes if you decide you want to see it for yourself. I found out that this special can be found in the special features of the Beavis and Butt-head – The Mike Judge Collection, Vol. 1 DVD. However, I did find the streaming video online and you can click the picture below to watch it. Ain’t I a nice guy?

Oh, just a heads up. This year, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special will air this Thanksgiving night on ABC. It will be followed by another Peanuts special about the first Thanksgiving. However, on Fox, there will be an Ice Age special at the same time and then a totally different Peanuts special will air right after. So, at about 8:30pm EST, there will be two different Peanuts specials airing on two different networks at the same time. I don’t recall hearing about anything like that before. I’ll simply DVR all the shows and watch them later. I’ll probably be at my in-laws at that time anyway.

I can’t find Garfield’s Thanksgiving Special airing anywhere, but you can watch in on YouTube here. Definitely one of my favorites. Enjoy.